


my heart is always beside you

by uwuxuxi



Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Choi San-centric, Flashbacks, Getting Together, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Melancholy, Mutual Pining, there's like one but it's fine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:06:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25797877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uwuxuxi/pseuds/uwuxuxi
Summary: For San, there was the Cape, where his family would go to visit their childhood friends at the beginning of summer. Their first visit to the Cape was the first time San had ever laid eyes on the actual ocean and he was riveted, his hands and nose pressed to the window like he wasn’t every bit of seventeen years old and had complained the whole trip.His parents’ friends had a son just a year older than San, tall and sophisticated with a shy smile as he introduced himself as Seonghwa. Together they’d slip away from the wine-sipping parties and run down to the beach hiding giggles behind their hands.Or, San is hopelessly in love with his best friend.
Relationships: Choi San/Park Seonghwa
Comments: 11
Kudos: 78





	my heart is always beside you

**Author's Note:**

> hello there! i have been sitting on this fic for like 3 months but i am finally just posting it because i am satisfied with where it is now! this is...an odd little think piece about romance and being young and in love in new york city (....ugh.) but as a young in love new yorker i thought it would be fun to write! pls enjoy!
> 
> also the homophobia is TINY. it is a tiny little reference you can skip over if you need to!  
> edited while i was tipsy & unbeta’d
> 
> title from jet lag – exo sc

In his time living in New York, San has learned a great many things. some of these things are practical New York specific instincts: move where your local corner store has the best sandwiches, if you can’t find it at Duane Reade – do you really need it?, don’t pet a dog without asking their owner, etc. Some of these lessons are more private and personal in nature: if your local barista knows you it probably means you shouldn’t ask them out, the nice Dominican man who runs the flower stand down the block sets aside the prettiest daisies for you every sunday, and every New Yorker down to the most stubborn of old grumpy aunties with their equally old and grumpy dogs wants an escape from the hustle and bustle of the city to see if there really is more to the world than congestion and black coffee fueled angst.

San, personally, isn’t quite sure what more of himself he has left to find at this point and he’s almost positive that if there was he wouldn’t be able to find it in nature. New York City, as temperamental as her people, was a forge of the strong and beautiful and San didn’t believe that any New Yorker worth their salt would need to be tempered by the chill waters of a country house. 

There was something to be said for wilds not made of steel and concrete though, of the salty spray of the ocean and the comforting scent of freshly cut grass. San gives them credit where credit is due – because even a stern New Yorker like himself knows that Central Park is  _ not _ enough nature to be considered a respite from the pollution and traffic that cloak it at both sides – but San is too firm in his beliefs to assume that he needs to leave the city to know who he is. 

That isn’t to say that there aren’t discoveries to be made in the worlds of the North East that haven’t yet been dominated by skyscrapers and the click of heels on uneven concrete sidewalks. The people who leave the city to take in a landscape instead of a skyline come back fundamentally changed with a knowledge that there might be a life beyond the grays and blacks of Manhattan. They had their time shares and their hotel rooms and their family homes in the places they called their own outside of Manhattan.

For San, there was the Cape, where his family would go to visit their childhood friends at the beginning of summer. Their first visit to the Cape was the first time San had ever laid eyes on the actual ocean and he was riveted, his hands and nose pressed to the window like he wasn’t every bit of seventeen years old and had complained the whole trip. 

His parents’ friends had a son just a year older than San, tall and sophisticated with a shy smile as he introduced himself as Seonghwa. Together they’d slip away from the wine-sipping parties and run down to the beach hiding giggles behind their hands.

Seonghwa didn’t know how to swim that first summer and San had teased him mercilessly until Seonghwa shoved him into the sand in an attempt to push it down his shirt. San had gripped his shoulders with a bright laugh. They were breathing the same air before Seonghwa said he was a terrorist and climbed off of him quickly. 

Still reeling, San shook the sand out of his shirt and let his eyes follow Seonghwa where he stood with his bare feet just out of reach of the tiny, lapping waves. “Are you afraid?” He’d asked as he sat up on his knees and marveled at the beautiful figure Seonghwa cut against the moonlight. 

“Isn’t everyone?” Seonghwa answered, only looking away from the ocean for a moment to look at San. “The ocean could swallow us whole before we could make a sound.”

San had wanted to kiss Seonghwa that night, with the gentle crash of the ocean waves and the bright half-moon as their only witnesses but he didn’t. He didn’t kiss him any night that summer or the three summers after because San never laid claim onto beautiful things that he wasn’t worthy of. (He did, however, teach him how to swim so at least they got to share something that San could claim.)

As he lights a cigarette and brings it to his lips, an empty cab speeds past him and he wonders what Seonghwa is doing right now--if he missed the wilds of the Cape too or if the Parisian nightlife was enough to satisfy the adventurer inside of him. 

San closes his eyes and lets the cool, late september breeze caress his face as he exhales his smoke. Wooyoung would make fun of his form and the thought is enough to bring his lips up out of their melancholic half smile. 

He hadn’t met Wooyoung in the same whimsical way he’d met Seonghwa. There was no natural scenery, no ocean waves — there was only the shouts and honking horns of New York City, but San likes to think that there’s whimsy to be found around some of the kinder New York corners. They’d collided into each other in the middle of Washington Square Park on the way to the same class and Wooyoung had laughed this manic, squealing laugh that made San howl in return. They’d decided to be best friends on the spot and San…

San wanted even a crumb of what Wooyoung had. 

Wooyoung, to his knowledge, doesn’t have a crush on the good catholic son from a good catholic family that would probably find him sick for his attraction, not only to Yeosang who San is  _ convinced _ is Wooyoung’s soulmate, but to men in general. If he does, San pities him and hopes that Yeosang just doesn’t give enough of a fuck about what his parents may think to push Wooyoung away forever.

With a sigh and another deep inhale of his cigarette, he digs his phone out of the pocket of his cargo pants and stares back at Byeol from where she was splayed leisurely on his lock screen. He isn’t surprised to find no notifications but the dull ache is there to bother him all the same. 

[instagram: marSeonghwa just made a post.]

San weighs his options, cigarette dangling loosely in his mouth as he stared at his phone some more. He can click the notification and acknowledge that at his very core he is a simp for Park Seonghwa and has had his notifications turned on for the better part of a year because he wants to know that the man was okay in paris or he can wait a few minutes for the likes to build up and not seem like a desperate little shit in need of a pretty boy to look at him like he mattered. 

His phone lights up suddenly after falling asleep and San squints at the screen to see the messages.

_ wooyoungie: i think i’m going to ask Yeosang out _

_ wooyoungie: thoughts from my favorite thot? _

He’s not surprised and he’s even happy for Wooyoung and Yeosang (because San knows in his heart that there’s _no_ _way_ that Yeosang would say ‘no’, not to Wooyoung. _Never_ to Wooyoung.) despite the loneliness clawing its way up his throat to rest on the top of his tongue. His friends’ happiness can be fulfilling too.

_ sanshine: if u don’t ask Yeosang out, im gonna ask him out for u _

_ sanshine: …should i text Seonghwa?  _

_ wooyoungie: hot catholic boy from the cape with the long bangs and the kind eyes?? _

_ sanshine: yeah,,, he’s in paris and he just posted so that means he’s up, right? i feel so desperate but like...  _

_ wooyoungie: you miss him _

_ sanshine: like a falling star misses the night sky.  _

_ wooyoungie: i do love when you get it with the depth of cancer emotion that makes you poetic, it’s such a nice san. melancholy, but nice.  _

_ sanshine: you’re a bitch for that, you know that, right?? _

_ wooyoungie: lmao yuh _

_ wooyoungie: text him, san _

_ wooyoungie: he might miss you, too _

There’s something unbelievable about that sentiment – the thought that someone as brilliant and vibrant as Seonghwa could miss someone like San. He remembers Seonghwa talking about one Kim Hongjoong, an aspiring producer that he’d fallen in love with while at boarding school.

( _ Boarding school _ . The thought was hard to wrap his head around. He wonders if he would have had a boyfriend by now if he was fortified in the hot forges of a private boarding school away from the prying eyes of his parents.)

Seonghwa’s parents hadn’t known he was gay at the time. They had no idea that Seonghwa and Hongjoong would sneak away and kiss under the great weeping willow by their dormitory, no idea that Seonghwa was happy and in love. San had felt such a high level of  _ envy _ for Hongjoong who he had never met and most likely would never meet as he and Seonghwa broke up at the end of that summer. Sometimes San wonders if it’s insane to be jealous of someone you had no real knowledge of and if Hongjoong would hate him if, by some miracle, San ended up dating Seonghwa, too.

San wants someone ( _ Seonghwa _ , San wants  _ Seonghwa _ ) to talk about him like that, like he’d hung the stars and the moon and held enough inspiration in his body to write songs about the world and life and love. 

_ wooyoungie: San. do it. _

_ wooyoungie: and if ur smoking, put the cigarette out. those things can kill you, you know. _

_ sanshine: yeah, i know. _

Right. San has to do this before he loses his nerve entirely. 

San breathes in the crisp night air and the smoke curling off of the cherry of his cigarette before he stubs it on his stoop and opens his phone again. He’s hovering over his chat with Seonghwa, where there hadn’t been new messages for two days, for almost long enough to lose his nerve before he pushes himself over the precipice and clicks it. For the first time, San is surprised to see the little typing bubble. Usually it makes him nervous but seeing it now, when Seonghwa is a world away and San has been itching to talk to him for days, makes hope unfurl tentatively in his heart.

_ hwaseong: sannie, are you up? _

_ hwaseong: oh! you read the message! i know it’s late for you but would you mind facetime? _

_ sannie: nope! i look like a little rat, tho _

_ hwaseong: that’s a lie. i’m sure you’re as pretty as the view i have right now _ . 

It’s things like that, little throwaway sentences that sound like San means the world to Seonghwa, that he’s more than just the son of a family friend. Seonghwa isn’t the type to be careless or unusually cruel so San doesn’t  _ think _ that he’s doing it to string him along. They don’t have mutual friends for San to bounce references off but he hopes that he isn’t the only one that Seonghwa talks to like this, in this warm and affectionate manner that just makes him  _ feel _ too much and not enough at the same time. Liking boys is  _ exhausting _ and San simply wishes that he has an off button to push to make all of the complex feelings stop.

[Incoming FaceTime call from hwaseong]

When San does answer, he feels as if his breath was punched right out of him because Seonghwa, who always looks like he fell right out of the pages of vogue korea, looks ethereal in the warm 8am parisian sunlight. He is reclining on his bed with the Toothless plushie that San had given him as a going-away present propping his head up and there’s just enough sleep still in his eyes that they’re lidded even as he smiles at San.  _ Beautiful _ .

San manages to croak out a ‘good morning’ and tries his best not to stare as Seonghwa rubs the sleep out of his eyes with his knuckle. It is definitely every bit of 2 in the morning for San but morning for Seonghwa so he  _ will _ get his pleasant ‘good morning’ from San if it’s the last thing he does. 

“It’s not morning for you,” Seonghwa replied, turning on his side and blinking slowly. “Not  _ technically, _ anyway. Do you plan on going to sleep any time soon?” 

San decides to be honest for now. “Don’t know. Got any plans for today?” He hasn’t  _ planned _ to stay up to watch the sunrise and sleep in until noon but that’s how many of his days have started this semester. He’d play Animal Crossing with Taeyong and Felix after he woke up and maybe he’d let them drag him out to dinner. Maybe they’d all curl up on the floor in a pillow fort and tour Taeyong’s five-star-and-unspeakable-hours-of-play-island before watching their Ghibli movie of the week. 

San thinks that they might be on _ Ponyo _ , but he can’t quite remember. He wonders what Seonghwa’s days are like but has never had the courage to ask. He hopes that they are as wonderful and whimsical as Seonghwa deserves.

“Mm, no. Today is my day off from classes so I was going to laze around before probably taking a walk along the Seine with some coffee.” 

“Are you going to flirt with some beautiful Parisian boy on this walk?” San is proud that he doesn’t sound as bitter as he feels. Seonghwa could meet his soulmate on the Paris streets and San would still be on his stoop in New York, loving him something fierce and unrequited. It was pathetic, really, that San could probably write a book of poetry about his longing that tastes like spicy honey and the sea spray of their little beach on the cape.

“Why flirt with a beautiful parisian boy when I could flirt with you?” San lets out a shocked laugh before Seonghwa’s words register fully and hit him like the 2 train speeding into Penn Station during the morning rush hour. 

“What?” he asks carefully, the single word weighing his tongue down and dragging the syllable. There is no way on Apollo’s gay Earth Seonghwa meant any word of that sentence seriously. He has to be joking, right? This  _ has _ to be for a laugh. 

_ Right _ ? “Why would you flirt with me?” 

Seonghwa laughs softly before the sound filters off into a yawn and his eyes stay closed for just a beat too long. He is still sleepy and the sight makes San’s chest clench with longing. What wouldn’t he give to be laying beside Seonghwa in the warm, early morning sunlight? San doesn’t think that there’s an answer to be found. “Ehy wouldn’t I? I flirt with all of my friends.”

No, he doesn’t. 

Or does he? San realizes that he really has no clue what Seonghwa does when he’s not with him but he supposes that he does know Seonghwa and there is way too much genuine care in his body for him to be a careless flirt. (So San hopes, at least.) “Yeah, but why flirt with  _ me _ ?” San counters, leaning back against the stairs with practiced nonchalance. He hopes his playful smile is believable because being in love with one of your best friends is made infinitely easier if you know how to hide it as well as you can craft a sonnet or navigate from Manhattan to Queens to get to  _ the _ best bubble waffles in New York. 

Seonghwa shifts in his bed and San’s eyes are drawn to the way his cheek pillow against the Toothless plushie as he uses it as a pillow, his finger idly pushing the little plush dragon’s foot back and forth. It seems as if a weight had settled around him and San wants nothing more than to smooth out the wrinkle in Seonghwa’s pretty brow and to take back the question that had put it there. “Because I  _ like _ you, San,” he finally says, the words formed with so much care that San wants to cup them in his hands and protect them forever. “And it’s more than just idle fun talk.”

nothing about this feels real but the angry wail of sirens just two blocks down shake San back into reality and forced him to refocus his eyes and try to address this new, potentially life-changing information.

San stares at his phone and swallowed the lump in his throat down as fast as it had grown in his throat. “Are you confessing to me at 2am, Park Seonghwa?” he ignores the way his voice cracks and hopes with all of his might that Seonghwa will do the same. Seonghwa is a such nice person, almost  _ too _ nice sometimes, and San is banking on that niceness to save him from any potential embarrassment.

(And heartbreak but San does  _ not _ want to think about the possibility that one of his best friends  and possible first love would be so heartless as to break his heart into little pieces over the phone. He does not want to manifest that sort of energy right now, not when one of his greatest desires was just inside of his grasp and fiercely derails that train of thought.)

“It’s not 2am for  _ me _ , though I kind of wish that it was because then we’d be closer.” Seonghwa’s voice is so warm and full of nothing but gentle affection as it cuts through San’s quiet wonderings. “But yes, I suppose I am confessing at this nebulous early morning hour. I was going to do it the moment I landed back home for Christmas but...that’s far too long.”

The words are doing precious little to ease the rapidly spinning gears in San’s head but he also couldn’t fight the giddy feeling rising in his chest. “What stopped you from doing it before you left?”

“I was afraid. If I’m being honest, I still  _ am _ afraid but being here, surrounded by love and romance, makes me wish that I was sharing it with you. That we could...oh, I don’t know. Kiss in front of the Eiffel Tower at sunset or something.”

San grins, his dimple digging a pretty hole into his cheek. “Park Seonghwa, that’s  _ very _ gay of you.”

Seonghwa does not seem impressed with this observation but he is smiling widely nonetheless. “I never pretended to be heterosexual, not with you at least. I did have my parents duped for quite a while there.”

They laugh together and San’s heart is singing along with the beat of the city around him as Seonghwa seems to finally start to wake up on his side of the world. 

“Hwa,” he says after they lapsed into a pleasant silence with the ambient city noises around them, resting his cheek in his hand. “What does this mean for us?” 

Even to his own ears, he sounds painfully insecure and afraid. 

Seonghwa’s pretty lips turn downward into a frown as he listens before shifting to sit up in his bed and hugging that precious plushie to his chest. San notices that he’s wearing a shiba inu hoodie and finds himself smiling. “Well, you haven’t said that you like me back yet, so I have no idea.” He’s trying to keep the situation light but San realizes that Seonghwa is just as insecure as him when it comes down to this. He might have more practice with boyfriends than San, but San guesses that asking people out and confessing to them never gets any easier. “But, if you return my feelings––” 

“I do!” San cuts him off suddenly, biting his lip to hold in his smile. “I’m sorry, but I really...really do. So, since I return your feelings…?”

Seonghwa smiles warmly from the apples of his cheeks to the top of his ears and gives his toothless a pleased squeeze. “Since you return my feelings, I guess the next logical conclusion is that we make things official?” 

San giggles and looks up at the sky above him, thanking any god lending an ear to their conversation. “And if I manage to book a flight to Paris for Thanksgiving break?”

“Then my bed has room for two.”

San knows what  _ he’s _ doing first thing in the morning when he wakes up. “Then I think I can work with that,  _ boyfriend _ .” 

Seonghwa beams at him, pushing his bangs back from his forehead. “I think I can too,  _ boyfriend _ .”

**Author's Note:**

> comments, kudos, & bookmarks are all appreciated! you can find me at twitter [@matchahwa](https://twitter.com/matchahwa) where i just keyboard smash because my kpop boys upset me


End file.
